We All Have Something to Say to Each Other: Being An Essay Entitled Kenneth Patchen And Four Poems
by David Meltzer
The Auerhahn Press, 1962

Capnomancy

The London tunnel is falling
and who asked for any of this
smoke or rubble or sudden armloads of responsibility?
In the bursting and blue flare of light, there,
says the man crowned by thin flames of ash and a simple knit cap,there, points the fine veined hand,
noting the third bird beyond the silence,
noting the beautiful at the point of destruction --
the fire in the chasm, the structure licked clean --you can come out now.

Listening to fallen beams popping in heat one breath from rebirth,there, he says, you see.